Language Management

Overview of Language Management

What is Language Management for?	When should you use it?
Customizing text displayed on your site.	To customize text on your site. For example, you could change the heading "Featured Categories" to "November Specials!" or the name of a print service from "cutting" to "slitting" to suit your needs and preferences and the language culture of the customers you serve.

The language management tools enable you to customize the text that is displayed on your site. For example, you could use this tool to change every occurrence of the word “gray” to “grey” in one or more languages on your site. You can also use the language management tools to customize labels on the site. For example, you can change the default tab label “Administration” to “Admin Only” (or any other descriptive label of your choosing) in one or more languages.

Note: You can also customize the language for a particular company with the company-level language management tools. For more information, see Language Management - Customize Strings - Company Level.

Note: The site language management tool was designed to enable site admins with a way to change isolated strings. It was not intended for:
● Overriding hundreds of standard strings for the purpose of creating an application that looks “completely different” from the production model.
● Completely changing the meaning of the text (e.g., from “send an email” to “receive an email”).

Settings & Examples

The settings and examples below show how various custom string settings will affect the display of language on the site (depending on the cultural variant of the language; for instance, the English language varies in the United States “culture” and in the British “culture”).

Note: Administrator-created names, such as names and product names, are stored in the system as “invariants.”

Strings Provided by the system*
Language Invariant	Cutter
English	no translation provided
English-GB	no translation provided
English-US	no translation provided
French	papier-coupeur
French-CA	no translation provided
German	no translation provided

Note: *For more information, see Language Support.

Overrides Defined by User
English	paper cutter
English-GB	guillotine
English-US	paper trimmer
French	no override
French-CA	no override
German	no override

The actual strings displayed are the merge of these two sets, with the overrides taking precedence over the system-defined strings as follows:

Actual Strings Displayed by the system*
Language Invariant	Cutter (always the system default)
English	paper cutter (from override)
English-GB	guillotine (from override)
English-US	paper trimmer (from override)
French	papier-coupeur (from system provided translation)
French-CA	(no translation provided/no override)
German	(no translation provided/no override)

Examples

● Example 1: A user who visits the site with a browser set to “English” will see “paper cutter” because there is an override for “English.”

● Example 2: A user who visits the site with a browser set to “English-GB” will see “guillotine” because there is an override for “English-GB.”

● Example 3: A user who visits the site with a browser set to “French-CA” (Canadian French) will see “papier-coupeur” because:

● No overrides for “French-CA” have been defined by the user and no translation defined by the system.

● The system searches and finds a less specific variant of the same language and finds a “French” translation which is close to “French-CA” and displays “papier-coupeur.”

● Example 4: A user who visits the site with a browser set to “German” will see “cutter” because there is no override for “German” and no translation provided by the system. The system has no choice but to display the language invariant string “cutter.”

Managing Language on Your Site

The Language Management page has three main controls:

● Language Support—sets the default language for your site.

● Resource Tracker—exposes the resource name for each standard element in your site (e.g., the resource name for the “Welcome” beneath the banner at the top of the page is “WelcomeMessage”). The Resource Tracker enables you to quickly locate the name of text elements that you want to customize on your site.

● Customize Strings—enables you to customize text elements on your site (e.g., to change “Welcome”—the “WelcomeMessage” resource name—to “Greetings”).

Resource Tracker

The Resource Tracker is a utility that enables you to see all the text on your site prefixed with the resource name of the element in brackets. The resource name is the system name for each element on the website. This ensures that you can locate only those text elements that you want to customize.

To enable the Resource Tracker

1. Go to Administration > Language Management.

2. Check the Enable Resource Tracker box.

Note: Enable the Resource Tracker imtely exposes the resource names of all text elements. So if you enable the Resource Tracker, the Enable Resource Tracker field will change from:

Enable Resource Tracker

to

[ManageLanguages.EnableTracker]Enable Resource Tracker

where ManageLanguages.EnableTracker is the resource name for the field name “Enable Resource Tracker.” The bracketed text is the value to use when searching for a string by key.